Spinoffs from vbulletin
 

I thought VB.org was a central point for all vb hacks but lately its getting crazy as theres that many sites u gotta bookmark for news updates etc.
Now dont get me wrong aint calling u hack makers etc - but it seems u make a hack to promote your own board then we all gotta log in there if we want it.
Surely this was`nt the orginal aim when this board was made ?

Now what do i mean by the above ?
Well u find a hack u like then u follow it to u get some problems so u reply to the orginal thread only to be told `sorry u need to reg on here now as only dealing with queries on my own board` but to me this will kill vb.org.
How many others are annoyed with this sort of board jumping hog or is it just me on me own.
whether i am right or wrong it still raises a good question though.

In fact gonna have another whinge now - years ago on here u needed any help u got it instantly (i should know as many mods etc have helped me in the past inc Erwin) but now the situation has changed totally.Help can come in weeks now not days - and if u ask for any specific alteration to a hack - $ signs start flashing around in peoples heads.Seems every man and his keyboard are looking for ways to make money.
To me vbulletin.org is a central point for all vbull hacks and if its hack to d0 with vbull then it should be on this board - whether its gotta be paid for or not.

In response to the uCS hack, we have a huge thread, its near impossible for us to keep up with some things there, both me and matthew try our best to give support there, however its alot easier to get support on our site as we can see each indivdual thread, and no one will get confused with who is replying to who. we are not charging anything, we still release and try to support our hacks best as possible here as well.

Dollar signs may flash in other people's minds, but I'm still broke over here. :p

I pay for the server that the site sits on out of my own pocket, we had some people donate some money that went directly to our license.

in all fairness if you're asking for an alteration then the hackwriter has every right to ask for a little to fill his/her pocket, asking for code customisation is alot different to asking for support.

my only gribe with vb.org is that theirs less of a community front in the coding forum (php, xhtml, etc) and all the php helpers/guru's have abandoned the irc channel. (don't get me wrong theirs still alot of help to be had, just not as many folk around as their used to be :()

regarding hacks, it's fine, theirs alot of stuff being released and very regularly too. and mostly with support to boot, supporting a hack is time consuming, it recently took me weeks to update one of my hacks. :(

not bothered to much about filling their pockets sabretOOthe as everyone needs to earn money but what me main gripe is - is that for help etc u gotta go elsewhere yet the orginal hack would not have the followers if it was not released on vbull in the first place.This place with its many members is a good advertising ground as you know that everyone who is a member here is part of a vb board so in effect a customer to someone.But if everyone decided to post hacks then say u want support u gotta come to so and so then why have the board in the first place ?Everything should be here in one place.

I don't create / release hacks... not a hacker, I just download & install them, but from my point of view the people who download the hacks shouldn't really have a say on where the hacker provides support unless we're paying for the hack. Its enough that they create the hack for free... Signing up at their board shouldn't be too much trouble considering it probably took longer than that to create the hack.... Just my opinion

My question to you is how do we as a site stop authors wishes? If they want to offer support on their site there is nothing we can do about that I'm afraid, other than offer a better medium for them to offer support.

If people who downloaded hacks never had a say then u would`nt have the hacks u have today as most hacks are based on members feedback.
You are right it dont take 2 mins to sign up - but theres something amiss about all this and in time we will see if im right.

I can honestly say it is not money that get me going with the hack. My time is worth much more for doing what I normally do. I also do not have the need to promote my site. I do it because: 1) I need the hack myself (although all the recent versions are purely released to fulfill other people's need). 2) It is only natural because I use other people's hack. I am putting back. 3) Some programming fun.

I can understand some of the things that have been turned out. I just replied to a few posts in my own thread, all I had to say was to go through the settings to find the answers. It is quite disappointing to be honest, here I am spend my spare time coding and support my hack. Yet people don't even bother to go through the settings before posting a question. I remember when I first used Matt Wright's perl cgi scripts years ago. Despite I had virtually zero knowledge about programming, I did some modification in the scripts after many fail and trail. Here we are on a hacking forum, people are asking questions which are explained in the setting description let along go throug the code.:( Another thing I have noticed at least in my thread is users seldom help others out. It seems they all drop in to get their problem fixed or make the feature request and leave.

I think the users are the real reason for the coders to either trying to make money out it, or promoting their own site and perhaps making some money in the end. It goes like if I need to put up with all the crap, why not get something out of it. The trend won't change unless the users are educated to know the programmers do not owe them anything, they are here to help in their spare time.